I was thinking, it gets boring having a limited number of different monsters or whatever in a game. Well, what if there was some kind of monster genarator that can create endless types of monsters? You enter different attributes and traits and the computer kind of creates a DNA stew randomly. Now, this would be easy to do for text-based games, but I think it might be possible for graphical games as well. For instance, you make one normal model for the body. This, based on the randomly picked trait, can then become thin, fat, tall, short, green, or brown, all which I think can be done in the programming (even though I don''t think it is very efficient). You add arms, which also can differ in size, and they might have claws at the end or normal fingers or just be tentacles. You get the idea. This would be tough to implement and would not be very efficient at the moment, but think of how fun it would be to sit there and fire at creatures you are seeing for the first time and might never see again. If you come up with enough traits the combinations are endless. Or, on a lesser scale, you could just change the height and width and size of a creature. This way not every creature of one species looks exactly the same and is more like real life. Masters Software

Well it sounds good but... what type of game are you going to implement this into. Monsters sometimes have to fit into the game themeatically. In this can you''d have to have a very clever monster generator. But in games where the randomness would easily fit into the game i think it would work, there''s no reason why not. I all comes down to the brains behind it''s implementation in my opinion. Would you like to be a be more specific?

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CHAOS in Warhammer (and 40K) come to mind... What a lot of hell spawend demon freaks with mutations


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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Yeah, I''d be some kind of Chaos-world game with freak mutations happening behind everybush...hehe...sorta se how long u can survive...

How would u moderate how powerful the "random" monster would be?
And(diablo-style)what kind of item would a thin/clawed/furry-on-the-toes monster leave behind after u kill it?

RealMoD

Just do something along the lines of giving each attribute a point value (like your armies ) and then make sure the point distribution does not exceed this. You could make certain things vital for different creatures and so they already have a base on which to build.

Do you want me to be specific?


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A game called jade cocoon did something like this.. I think. You could capture monsters and then merge them, and It''d average the vertices of their wings, arms, torsos, etc. together to create a new monster. Doing that on a large scale would make an interesting simulated life game, but might also help with creating infinite numbers of different monsters. Dunno how you''d handle the texture maps though. <=\

Fortunately (and unfortunately) I am making an RPG, so merging vertices is going to be a bit off (unless I end up building that 3D tiling engine ). I am going to have to live with prerendering the different creatures and then changing them... I might be able to get away with prerendering such things as anatomy so that I can have:
A leg of beast A,
Another leg of beast B,
Head of beast C,
Arm of beast D,
Another Arm of beast E,
Torso of beast F...

And randomise any other attributes (such as more arms, legs, heads, wings, horns etc )

Might be a bit difficult, and whenever you create a beast, just add a new sprite entry into the linked list which is a merger of all of these attributes . This is just to add to speed of blitting


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
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Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
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Well you could make the Generator Level/Scenerio based where it takes the locality as a prime factor for the seed for randomization. You could always base it off the character as well. There''s plenty of options and ways to balance a monster generator in terms of the power of the monsters that it will spew out.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

I think that it goes the same as what I said in Artificial Powermaxing. Balance it so that the creature will actually be able to move, and add a bit of randomness. Just make sure that there is enough restriction to make believable creatures. Maybe if you have spawned creatures, they come across each other and merge into one (losing some attributes overall, but gaining more than the individuals ). These creatures could then spawn a couple of their own... I think I will try and make a database of this and see what will happen... If I can be bothered getting of my a$$


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
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made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)

On the topic of rendering the monsters. I have a very stupid question : how the heck do you do to have a sprite that can have various clothes, weapons, etc. Does anyone know how they did it in Ultima for instance ? Is that totally off topic ?

youpla :-P